of empty beds and empty chests
by greyrooms
Summary: He needs her more, when she wants them less. post-The Worst Couple bade oneshot.


First things first- I changed my penname. I was ll-kelsaay, now I'm greyrooms. (also check out my super-trendy-no-capitals-fic-title)

Second things second- I own nothing, I'm just playing in Dan Schneider's sandbox.

Third things third- I'm going to try and keep this A/N short. This is very VERY prose-y, flashbacks are the ones in past tense and I would've done them in italics for more clarification but I use italics for _emphasis_, ya know.

There's minor sexual allusions that are probably insignificant enough to be overlooked but I'm really paranoid about that kind of stuff so hopefully it's not a problem.

Authors note officially over and it's longer than intended so I'm shutting up now ok PLEASE ENJOY THE FIC

* * *

It's been a few months, if they lie to themselves. In actuality it's been closer to half a year at this point. Three years and then ten seconds and then six months and counting without each other.

Senior year is coming to a close, every conversation is laced with a sad sense of finality. Robbie and Cat were "officially" boyfriend and girlfriend, (with practically the entire school heaving a loud sigh of "_finally_") and Tori and Andre had both gotten full scholarships to a prestigious school of music.

Everyone got their happy ending. Except for him. Except for her.

/

Beck misses her a lot. He doesn't know if he'll ever know what it feels like to not miss her.

She's the only one that doesn't pay any attention to him. It almost feels like it did when they were in their first few weeks of school, before he learned her name, before he loved her. Now it's the last few weeks and she's gone back to ignoring him and he still loves her but he's given up on chasing her and might as well forget her name. If he didn't hit so hard like some kind of cruel joke, he'd say the parallel was damn near poetic.

One lingering glance at her face and every time he forgets why they were angry, why they fought, and all the good reasons she had to walk out that door and all the good reasons why he let her.

He loves her. He loves her so much. And he loves her so much that he loves that she hasn't spoken to him in six months- because even then, he's learned who he was, what he wanted- and she ticked every box.

/

"How _could_ she?" were the first words out of Beck's mouth when the doors of Andre's car closed, finally bringing it up after keeping quiet all night.

"How could you let her leave?" Andre responded, not unkindly, but it hits hard. He _let_ her leave. They spent the rest of the car ride home in a jarring silence, Beck reminding himself to breathe.

He walked into the RV and found nothing but loneliness and missing and not enough _Jade_, the weight of depression descended on him. He realized that he hated when she was gone even more than he loved when she was around. He questioned his decision, light and dark shades of his psyche warring so loudly he felt like his head might crack.

His sheets seemed colder. His chest seemed emptier. His bed seemed too big.

The silence around him echoed with broken promises of "forever," the whispers before the screams at the top of their lungs, the sound of her laughter harmonizing with his.

And he had to try and deal with the reality that she was no longer a part of his life, that "we" was just "I," that "before" has turned into "after."

/

Jade, on the other hand, found her hate for him. He screwed her over. He never took her side in arguments. He flirted with other girls to get a rise out of her. He rudely dumped her and worst of all, she let the pain make her hate.

She hates him and hates herself now because she loved him and loved herself then.

It's tiring. Exhausting, even. That's what she hates even more- because she knows hate is anger, hate is remembering, hate is not letting go, but hate is still _caring_ and feeling and holding on. And she wishes she didn't feel a damn thing but she still _does_, so she chooses to hate. She stubbornly holds on to this hate with all her fury and fire and passion and energy, because loving would be worse. But it still doesn't keep her from crying to sleep.

/

Jade was sitting on the floor of his RV, mindlessly cutting up a soda can when a particularly forceful cut went rogue and all of the sudden her finger was bleeding, and bleeding a _lot_.

She jumped up and ran to the sink and Beck isn't far behind, throwing his laptop aside after being startled by her sudden movements.

"Jade?" he asked, concerned, until he saw her absolutely captivated by the sight of her own finger rapidly dripping blood down her other fingers like a stairway and falling into a pool in her opposite hand.

"Holy _shit_, Jade!"

But she didn't move. She just kept staring. So he began to panic for her, turned the water on, and pulled her hands beneath the stream of water that instantly turns pink.

"Beck! Why'd you do that! It looked so cool!" He rolled his eyes in response.

Fifteen minutes later, he was forcefully pressing a washcloth to her still-bleeding finger.

"Jesus, don't press so hard." Jade grumbled.

"Well, don't bleed so much!"

"Yeah, okay, let me just instruct my finger to stop bleeding."

"It's really bad."

"It's _my_ finger, I'll tell you how bad it is!"

"…I think you need stitches."

"…Seriously? _Cool_."

/

He stares mindlessly at the back of his hands- hands that have aged six months now- and he doesn't quite recognize how they move when not tangled up in _Jade_. He wonders how many times the skin on his hands has been replaced since the last time they were between her legs or brushing her hair off her face or gripping that stupid doorknob. He fought for her until his hands were bloody and she still slipped through his fingers, why didn't he hold on? He remembers when her claws dug deeper, the scars on his hands from being touched by her spelled out jealousy, and her fingers bruised from holding on too tightly.

His fingers bend, flex, with the urge to break something. Knuckles throb with the slow burn of anger, having thought that maybe, just _maybe_, she could feel alive without him.

/

"You son of a bitch!" Jade cried hysterically, furiously pushing at Beck's chest.

"Jade, look at me-" he spoke calmly but loudly, in an attempt to compose her.

"-No! How _could _you!" her voice hopelessly cracked and she slapped at his arms, tears freely falling down her face.

"I didn't- Jade-" Her fists clenched at his denial and she attempted to throw weak punches, but he caught one wrist and then the other, "Look at me!"

He tugged at her wrists and pulled her close, their bodies pressed against each other, and she instantly wilted in his arms.

"…Please." he added, his voice softer, and the anger in the room settled and then filled with the sound of Jade's shuddering breaths. "Shh, Jade…" Her head slumped over, and he released her wrists and wrapped his arms tightly around her, holding her up as she continued to cry.

"You cheating bastard," Jade choked out, each word accentuated with a sharp, hyperventilated breath.

"Please…" he muttered, lowering his head and whispering directly into her ear, slowly, "There's no one else, okay?" His lips casually grazed her skin behind her ear, "There's only _one_… And it's only you."

"I hate you so much," she whimpered against his chest, but the edge in her voice is lost.

/

Jade's been taking psychology as an elective this semester. It's an easy grade, and when she's not skipping class to sit on the front steps of the school to hear Andre plucking away at the strings of his guitar and Cat giggling, she does actually learn a few things.

_You gave him an ultimatum, _her brain tells her. _If it were you on the other side of that door, you wouldn't have opened it either. You left. And he let you. But you still left. _

She understands her brain's turned to self-loathing in an attempt to justify what he did. She can't figure out why, but it's because she still loves him; her brain knows that, and he knows that, and all their friends know that. She doesn't comprehend it, though, and thinks maybe she skipped the class where she should've learned that or hasn't gotten to the chapter yet.

/

Beck and Jade laid together under his sweat stained tye-dye sheets, her head on his arm, legs intertwined, his arm around her waist and fingers rested on the curves in her hips right where they fit. The clock read far past midnight. The light of a full moon spilled through the window of the emergency door on the ceiling of his RV, illuminating her pale skin, and she could see her reflection in his brown eyes.

Her chest rose and fell, the initial euphoria of loving each other wearing off and replaced with a natural high. She sleepily traced patterns along the palm of his hands, and he loved every single breath of her.

And he just wanted to hold on for dear life, because he had never known completeness like having this hurricane of a girl in a calm, safe and fragile beside him. With eyes gently closed, they let a moment of pure, sublime perfection take them.

"Hey, Beck?" Jade said softly into the darkness.

"Yeah?"

"…Can we order pad thai tomorrow?"

He smirked and his heart swelled at the sound of her laughter, so he pulled her closer and responded with amusement, "I love you so much."

/

Six months without her and all of the sudden she's at his door. She looks confused and determined and a bit angry; she ducks under his arm, letting herself inside just like she used to. And he doesn't know why she's there, not knowing anything about psychology or 5 stages of break-up grief, and truth is, she doesn't really know either. All she knows is that she needs to see him.

"Why are you here, Jade?" he says, not unpleasantly.

"I, uh… we just never got a proper goodbye, is all."

She's standing like she's expecting a punch, looking around his RV with something like familiarity. Remembering when she used to feel loved- and pushes away the thought that she can still feel _him_ surrounding her every breath.

"So that's why you're here? To… say goodbye?"

She doesn't answer. Orange light spills through the doorway, painting her skin, casting long, slanted shadows on her face.

They both look too tired for 17.

Their gazes lock with a nervous sort of uncertainty, and he can't shake the feeling that maybe he never lost her.

She purses her lips, shrugs a shoulder, waves a hand towards him, "It's just… without you…" her sentence trails off, but he gives an understanding nod.

"…Without you." He repeats softly to himself, tentatively moving closer to her.

The look in her eyes unexpectedly melts into something vulnerable and delicate. His implied calm eats away at her.

The room seems to let out a sigh, and they mutually launch forward, pressing their lips together with intensity and ferocity, her hands tangled in his hair, his cradling her face.

She's the first to pull away, and the space between them fills with exasperated breaths and he silence is replaced with all the words they can't say. It sounds like an apology, like "I missed you," like "I waited for you." Jade staggers backwards, hoping he doesn't notice her lack of grace, until her knees find the edge of his bed and she sits down. The feeling of being loved washes over her like a wave rolling onto the shore, reminding her of how good it would feel to finally forgive him.

"Why I left…" she starts nervously in a soft voice, staring at the floor, "it wasn't 'cause I didn't lov-"

"I know." Her stance worries him so he goes to her without thinking twice.

Beck drops to his knees, positioning himself between her legs, hands in the appropriate place on her hips; she softly kisses the outline of his lips as her hands rest behind her neck.

"So what do we do now?" Jade says after a deep sigh, resting her forehead against his.

"We forgive…" he replies quietly, tired eyes gently closed.

"…And we forget?" she finishes.

But they can't forget. Because they _know. _

He knows how every vertebrae of her spine feels under his fingers, what makes her come, what makes her stay. She knows the way his hair sits when he wakes up in the morning. She knows all the quiet things about him that no one else will ever know. He knows when she says "two sugars" in her coffee she actually means three. She knows the way her mouth feels in his kiss like they were the words to her favorite song- how could they just _forget_ what lies in the dustiest corners of each others minds?

He takes her hands in his, loses himself for a moment in studying the chipped black nail polish desperately clinging to the edges of her nails, the faded scar from her stitches, the raised crease of bright red skin at the heel of her palm (he always did feel guilty for not going after her the time she burned her hand).

Staring at hands improves memory function, another useless fact Jade learned in psychology. But it might be why both of them are being reminded of a time when they didn't look so sad and defeated. Rediscovering passion, affection, happiness.

The repressed, fading memories, shoved to the back of their minds, push their way to the front of the conscious at the touch of her skin and the smell of his cologne, suddenly as real as the days they lived them.

A deep breath in and lungs fill with the realization that she'll always be a part of him and he'll always be a part of her. Like the scars on her hands, she's in his bloodstream and although her skin is tough, somehow he's underneath it.

They loved, they hated, and they forgave, but they'll never forget.

* * *

Now for another long author's note because I love the sound of my own keyboard.

I hope this fic made sense because as of right now I've read it over so many times I can't even tell. Kind of like when you're at a slumber party and it's really late so everything is really really funny? Only I don't have friends to have slumber parties with so I have fanfiction. And I'm not laughing because it's supposed to be emotional. Maybe you're laughing if you think it's really bad. Or if you're at a slumber party and it's really late.

...Hooray for happy endings! Or, slightly open-ended-virtually-no-resolution endings. Because I'm lazy and didn't feel like having to deal with all the aftermath.

Characterization was a bitch in this because there's not a lot of dialogue but I still felt I had to keep decisions mutual and intentions pure and respectful.  
(As in, not having Beck show a dickish amount of ownership over Jade, or forcing them back together simply because they're lonely. I didn't want that. Because that's not cool.)  
(and for god's sake I really REALLY hope when Beck and Jade get back together in canon they don't portray it like that because it would probably RUIN MY LIIIIIFE)

**Imagine me right now nudging you towards the review button. Go on. Touch it. _I dare you._** (also, I enabled anonymous reviews. I'm up for vicious anonymous criticism if you are.)


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